I decided to try out v3. I installed the software and then told Parallels to use my Boot Camp version of Vista Ultimate. It crashed several times while installing, even to the point of showing me a bsod or two. Eventually, after several starts it got to the point where I could log in to Vista, put in my password and then ..... nothing -- it crashed! OK, so now I try to start it up via Boot Camp, just to see whether there's any permanent damage. Yes, there's damage. It won't boot. So I pop in my Ultimate CD and Repair my Vista. Finally I go back and try starting it again in Parallels. It seems to work, but at least one of my programs (Adobe Audition) tells me my license isn't working and I have to reactivate, which I do. But then I restart into boot camp and have to once again activate Audition. OK, now this is getting annoying, so I decide to scrap Parallels and just use Boot Camp, but when I run Vista in Boot Camp now, it doesn't seem to register that I have two processors in my Intel Core 2 Duo. My Multimeter sidebar gadget tells me I have just 1x86. How do I get my second processor to work again?
Perhaps, but it was caused by Parallels and I was wondering how to fix it, but also whether anyone else has had this problem and whether they were able to fix it somehow.
Well, check Task Manager in case the Gadget is wrong or keeping some cached info. In the 'old days' of XP, there was a single CPU and multi CPU HAL (hardware abstraction layer.) Parallels used to swap out HALs between boot camp/parallels boots. Every now and then it would screw up and users would see the "unable to load..." errors on booting. With Vista, I don't know. I heard reports that MS went to a single HAL, but I'm really not sure. There used to be utilities on XP to let you swap out HALs. I would look for something similar for Vista....
